Punishment of the individual vs Punishment of the alliance

[Delta1212]

If I wanted to do that, I could have - yet clearly I have more integrity than you.

My option has more votes than you option, and it has more votes than any other option, and by that simple logic I would deem it to be superior to yours and any other. You can twist and turn things any way you like, however at the end of the day, it's simple logic.

Except that everyone who voted for "punish the group" also agrees with "treat the government as te alliance" which makes that a stronger viewpoint.

Logically, of course.

[Starcraftmazter]

Except that everyone who voted for "punish the group" also agrees with "treat the government as te alliance" which makes that a stronger viewpoint.

First of all, this is not necessarily true. Second of all, they are in fact mutually exclusive options. Third of all, you are trying to imply that whoever voted for the government option also agrees with punishing the alliance, this is again false.

Overall, I think I've said all that I've had to say here, the votes speak for themselves.

[sammykhalifa]

Except that everyone who voted for "punish the group" also agrees with "treat the government as te alliance" which makes that a stronger viewpoint.

Logically, of course.

And I'm sure they also agree with punishing the son for the sins of the father.

I say go after the individual first, and if you can't work something out, then yadda yadda yadda.

[loannes]

Seek punishment of the individual. No need for war because of a rogue rank-and-file member. Only seek to punish the alliance in the event that diplomacy fails completely.

[Delta1212]

First of all, this is not necessarily true. Second of all, they are in fact mutually exclusive options. Third of all, you are trying to imply that whoever voted for the government option also agrees with punishing the alliance, this is again false.

Overall, I think I've said all that I've had to say here, the votes speak for themselves.

An individual (in government) commits a punishable act.

As it is an individual, everyone who voted to punish the group for the actions of an individual agrees with punishing the group in this situation.

As it is a member of government, everyone who voted for punishing the group for government actions agrees with punishing the group in this situation.

That is the opposite of mutually exclusive. As all government members are individuals, anyone who voted for punishing everyone for the actions of an individual must agree with punishing everyone for the actions of an individual who is in government.

The third option is a subset of the second, which means holding the second point of view logically requires holding the third.

Option 1: I like all cats - 10 votes

Option 2: I like all dogs - 3 votes

Option 3: I like all dalmations - 8 votes

Option 4: Candy - 2 votes

According to this poll, more people like dalmations than cats. According to you, more people would like cats than dalmations according to this poll.

[Gondor]

I would seek punishment of the individual. Although this seems like a personal battle between two people who disagreed about how to count than an actual poll.

[Dochartaigh]

As a relevant example considering your alliance of a year ago and the starter of this thread, recall the NpO-FIST war.

SCM impersonated AlmightyGrub on IRC for reasons that were not malicious, but never the less his whole alliance was attacked the next day even after an apology. Did ES have a burning hatred for FIST? Not likely. But either through boredom or a desire to make an example NpO attacked FIST over a minor incident simply because it was easily within their position to do so. If treaties and the political winds were arrayed differently there's no doubt that ES would have gone for a diplomatic approach over a hasty DoW.

In CN as in RL the ability to safely chart a certain course is often reason enough to take it.

In my opinion this is not a trait reserved only for former hegemony alliances and the more aggressive of the rest. And the hegemony wasn't taken down for attacking alliances over the actions of their members. While every situation has it's own mitigating factors, when an alliance accepts a member that later does something foolish or inflammatory it's their responsibility to make the situation right to the satisfaction of the victim, or find themselves culpable to the actions of their own.

Actually, if you wish to discuss that then please get something straight. To my knowledge, ES wanted to ZI SCM without attacking the whole alliance. They refused to allow this and stated that they would defend SCM. So, there was no satisfactory end to the diplomatic portion. And there was several treaties involved that were important, including one with Polaris's allies VE. so please do not discuss a situation you know very little about.

And actually, the Hegemony was taken down for that very reason. NPO attacked OV over the actions of a few members and then got attacked by OV allies. The rest of Q/1V joined in and also got attacked.

And you last sentence shows you know nothing of the NpO-FIST war.

[Penguin]

Delta is right, of course. Option 2 implies option 3, which together beat out option 1. However, that's not even the worst problem with this poll. The answer already depends heavily on the circumstances and you have provided two very different circumstances in the OP. Effectively, you tried to ask two questions at once and we have no way of knowing which question the respondents decided to answer.

If they decided to answer "If a general member of an alliance conducts an act of aggression, do you seek punishment of the individual or the alliance?" their choices were option 1 and option 2. If they decided to answer "If an alliance leader conducts an act of aggression, do you seek punishment of the individual or the alliance?" their choices were option 1 and option 3. How many of the (currently) 59 respondents that picked option 1 were answering the former question and how many were answering the latter question? We have no way of knowing.

Split this into two polls and two scenarios, one with the words "general member of an alliance" and the other substituted with the words "alliance leader". Ask each question in separate polls and provide two (or possibly a third null vote option) identically worded options for each poll, "seek punishment of the individual" and "seek punishment of the alliance" will work for both. I predict a pretty large difference between the polls that reflects the widely held belief that we hold alliances accountable for their leaders.

[Dochartaigh]

This is not overlooked, I think you missed the point of the poll. It is not about how alliance A reacts and whether they want to or don't want to give up the individual. There are countless possibilities for scenarios.

No - this is a simple ideological question of whether you would like to go after the individual or the alliance if you feel you have been wronged by someone from that alliance.

frankly, it is overlooked because how Alliance A reacts can for many dictate how they will answer. The fact that you are not even bothering to look at that simple fact, shows that this poll is not a good poll to reflect the attitude of anything.

Also, i do believe Delta and Penguin also sum up the other portions quite nicely.

[Mistress Demona]

First poll:

If a leader or member(s) of an alliance perpetrates an aggressive act of war against another alliance, is it right that the whole alliance be attacked if no peaceful resolution can be reached?

Second poll:

If an individual commits an act of aggression against your alliance, which is more appropriate?

I read two different questions - not the same poll. One focuses more on leader and adds "if no peaceful resolution can be reached?" and the other puts more focus on the individual and doesn't say much about a diplomatic solution.

You should have agreed on what the question actually is first.

[Ubermeir]

Try and get satisfacition from the Alliace, perhaps including distancing themselves from supposed roguery. If that fails then you can pretty much say that by their support of the rogue acts that they support said rogue and take it from there...

[Schattenmann]

Firstly, your very statement is flawed. The "alliance" had nothing to do with the tempering - it was one individual.

Secondly, if you were to hold a poll of the community's opinion on this, I would bet your perception of what is and what isn't morally unacceptable would lose to mine. In regards to this specific issue.

For those of you keeping track:

Schattenmann's unbiased poll has the point of view that Schatt espouses winning 138 to SCM's 21

Starcraftmazter's unbiased poll has the point of view that Schatt espouses winning 83 to SCM's 75

[Schattenmann]

I think the problem is basically that SCM thinks I mean that if Electron Sponge uses a botarmy to slow down the Red Dawn forum tomorrow that I mean that CoJ would immediately launch unrestricted warfare on every TLC member in our range. Or substitute "member" for ES. I don't know how you get that out of a sentence that basically says "we consider an aggressive act of war to be an aggressive act of war" but here we are.

Clearly, alliances that have been wronged speak to the alliance whose member or government (or both as the case may be) has committed the trespass. The fact of the matter is that talking doesn't always work, and when it doesn,t the whole alliance gets the business.

[Azaghul]

Treat is as an individual infraction until the point where it's a government member doing it or it's sanctioned by the government, at which point it's the responsibility of the entire alliance.

The problem with "only punishing the individuals" even when it involves the government is that that point of view basically says that no alliance wars should ever happen, which would be unsustainable and terrible for the game.

[Brenann]

Got to love how the community usually provides examples for everyone: http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=66116

So Alliance A has an issue... they talk with Alliance B Leader... after loltics... seems resolved.... an Alliance B member performs an act of aggression and Alliance A takes issue and attacks all of Alliance B. 1 member decided the fate of the entire alliance.

Seems like one person can court the actions of an entire alliance. No matter the level.

Greanted there are little details missing from the general statement, but as an example its nice and handy

This is not to drag that specific Alliance issue into this thread, but I am using it as an example.

[Drostan]

My point of view was grocery misrepresented, and you know that.

O rly?

I think that this is fairly straight forward. In most cases you seek individual punishment and then escalate if the government of the alliance proves uncooperative. If the offender is a government member, I still think you should attempt to communicate with the rest of the government to work out a solution (read coup), but I can understand how a leader attacking your nations would prompt you to go to war with their alliance.

[Corinan]

My point of view was grocery misrepresented, and you know that.

Hahaha, thank you for this. Made my day.

[Proxian Empire]

Leaders must be held responsible for their actions.

[Cotillion]

Just picked candy, depends on the situation, and how things unravel from there too.

[Prime minister Johns]

Assuming that I was the leader of a large alliance which I am not.

I would in this hypothetical situation follow the following plan in this situation.

I would approach the leadership of the alliance whose member offended me and ask for them to either punish them or hand him over to me to be suitably punished. If they agree then the individual would get a punishment that is proportional to the amount of damage that they caused plus a little extra and then let go. If the alliance refused to punish him or allow me to punish him then I would consider an alliance war to punish that individual and anyone else who tried to stop me. But it would be made clear at the start of the war that my objective would be to punish the original target and they could blame him for the war and the war could stop the instant that they handed him over then they could have a white peace and no reps would need to be paid.

If the individual is the leader of the alliance and a diplomatic resolution of the situation failed then it would be a full scale alliance war with all the associated mess and fuss that goes with that situation.

I would much rather prefer to punish the guilty individual, but this may not always be possible and group punishments are sometimes an unfortunate necessity. And this method is the fairest way I can think of to resolve the situation.

But I will probably never be the leader of a major alliance for one very good reason, I do not want that kind of job so I make great efforts to avoid it. So all of this is a moot point, but it makes for an interesting thought none the less.

[DragonsPhyre]

The individual in all cases, unless there is evidence that the government encouraged, ordered, or condoned the aggressive action. If a government member itself, individual at first, alliance-wide only if the rest of the government encouraged, ordered, or condoned the aggressive action.

[lmcfalcon12]

I understand that a single person does represent their entire alliance...but to a certain degree. If you're going to punish someone, punish the individual who is responsible for being a moron. Don't punish the alliance and those who have done nothing wrong. One person does not always speak for everyone.

[Valerius]

Punishment for the individual. Always.

The results please me. Hopefully this means our standards as a community have changed for good. Though it's too late for many alliances.

Edit: Just a thought, but perhaps punishment is the wrong word. Punishment requires an authority to give it, and someone beneath to receive. I am also hopeful that the days where 'punishment', per se, can be dealt out.

Edited August 18, 2009 by President Kent